"You're too angry for them, Parker." The girl said. "They're scared of you."
Parker shrugged, staring pointedly at the fire they were both sitting in front of. It was well past midnight now, they should both be in bed, but to Charley it felt like she did this almost every night, just with different male presenting teenagers with lots of angst to rant off, and apparently only one person they could rant to. Her. Every night, either in front of this fire or the one in Gryffindor Tower, depending on whether it was a male presenting ranting kid or just a plain old male ranting kid. Whether it be troubles with their memory and fear of failure, troubles with some girl who kept making them agitated and having no friends, or troubles with his precious little crush and fear of upsetting them, Charley was hearing it. All the time. Every single night.
"Come on Parker. You know where they've come from, what they used to face. You know what they currently face. Shouting at them is not going to get you anywhere." She chided, hoping that eventually Parker would see that they couldn't shout at everyone.
Parker, predictably, snorted. "I know where Lethe came from and what they face now, Charley. But I'm not about to give them a pass from life whenever they come to talk to me. Lethe is a bit pathetic."
Lethe was pathetic. That was the point. That was what Charley was trying to say to them. Lethe was a little pathetic ball of fear who needed to have some confidence to talk to someone other than her and Fitz. And Parker seemed an obvious choice, but Parker was being difficult.
So she gave up trying to get Parker to accept that Lethe needed slightly gentler handling than being shouted at and calling stupid. Because Parker did that to everyone. Including her.
"Parker, just shut up. Stay sat down and stay shut up for a bit. You're not going to listen to me, but damn it if you aren't going to calm down tonight. So don't say anything and do. Not. Move." She got up out of her chair (and it was so so warm in here, near the fire. She didn't want to go out into the cold) and walked over to the entrance, looking back and being surprised to see that Parker was still in their seat, still staring angrily at the fire.
Getting down from the top of the tower to the bottom without being seen or heard was a huge task. It was fortunate that so few people were out enforcing curfews at night, because if they had been enforcing it Charley would have been caught at least twenty times. This year.
Once she was in the castle's more central area, Charley focused. Lethe had taught her this last year, and they were far better at it than her, because Lethe had so much more raw magical power than she did, but she could sort of do it. Well enough that this kind of trip was easy.
She could sense the different magical signatures in the castle if she focused like this. And she could tell who was on patrol, and exactly how she could get to the kitchens. There'd be an elf there who could make her some hot chocolate for herself and Parker. She could shrink it, of course. But she needed to get it, first.
The elves were happy to help, as always. They were darlings, all of them, and they would always get her something if she asked for it, and she was pretty sure that they didn't tell anyone that she had been there. On occasion, she'd gotten food for Lethe when they weren't up to eating with everyone else, and countless mugs of about seven different warm beverages for all her favourite ranting friends when she realised that they weren't going to calm down. Hot chocolate was Parker's favourite, Fitz liked warmed pumpkin juice, and Lethe kept trying different ones to see what they liked.
"Thank you." She said, smiling at the two elves who were there to help.
"It is fine, Miss Pollard." One of them said. "We are happy to help you help your friends." She still didn't know how they knew that she was helping her friends, but she didn't question elf magic. They did all the cleaning and such, they probably knew about who was up and in which rooms at a certain time.
She took the shrunk hot chocolate back with her to the common room, where Parker was actually still sitting down, though they seemed to have found a heap of blankets and piled them all on a couple of chairs.
"Here, have some hot chocolate, Parker." She said, handing them one of the mugs.
So they sat and drank hot chocolate for half an hour and didn't mention the argument about Lethe at all. Charley had really wanted to sort it, but a calm Parker was better than an infuriated Parker.